Understanding a Story's True Meaning

It's strange how you (okay, I) can start writing a story intending it to be about one thing, and in the end, realize it's really about something else. Has that happened to you?

With my newest story, "A Matter of Trust," I wanted to portray the dissolution of a marriage (with a crime thrown in, of course). The story opens with a happily married couple enjoying dinner. An argument develops because the wife is worried about her husband's health. His blood sugar is too high, thanks to his love of jelly. He agrees to start cycling, a way to get his weight--and his blood sugar--under control. The argument ends, and the two are happy once more. For a time anyway. Neither of them foresee that the husband would become addicted to the jelly donuts sold by a shop in town--a shop he begins to secretly ride his bicycle to each day. And they certainly don't anticipate the events that would come from that addiction.

As my writing progressed, I realized that the husband--the main character--was an emotional eater, and jelly (rather than his wife) was the love of his life. I started working that concept into the story, going back to the beginning and layering the idea into the husband's thoughts. I'd expected that doing so would be enough for the man's actions to not only be believable but also understandable, even if the reader wouldn't agree with them. He would be a real person, rather than a character who did things because the plot dictated it. That should have been enough for a solid story.

But when I reached the end, I realized, what I'd written still wasn't enough. (Don't you hate when that happens?) Why had this guy come to associate jelly with love? That was the key question. Once I figured out the answer and layered it into the story, only then did the husband become full-blown and the story have real heft. Only then did I realize that a story about the dissolution of a marriage turned out to actually be a story about ... Well, I'm not going to say. I don't want to give everything away. (But I promise, there's a crime in there!)

This type of analysis can be useful for most stories. Readers become invested when characters feel real. So the more an author understands why a character does what he or she does, the more the character will (hopefully) come across as a complex human being rather than a cardboard cutout. 

I hope I've enticed you to read "A Matter of Trust," maybe with a jelly donut by your side. The story is in the anthology THREE STRIKES--YOU'RE DEAD!, which was published a month ago by Wildside Press. Every story in the book involves crime and sports (baseball--major league, minor league, and high school--biathlon, boxing, bull riding, figure skating (that story is by fellow SleuthSayer Joseph S. Walker), marching band/football, running, swimming, tennis, ultimate Frisbee, zorbing, and cycling, of course). It can be purchased in trade paperback and ebook formats from the usual online sources. The trade paperback also can be purchased directly from the publisher.

Before I go, I'm delighted to share two bits of news:

• My short story "Real Courage" is a finalist for this year's Anthony Award. You can find links to read all five of the nominated stories for free by clicking here.
  
• I have been named the recipient of this year's Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award--the lifetime achievement award given by the Short Mystery Fiction Society. This award is given for "having produced an impressive body of short crime fiction" and for "having made a major impact on the genre." To say I'm honored to have been selected is the height of understatement. The award will be given out during opening ceremonies at Bouchercon in August. I hope to see you there.
  

Yikes, I'm History!

I turned 80 last month, and it's a quarter century since I first heard part of my lifetime categorized as "historical" (literary) and my age as "geriatric" (medical). I was outraged by both at the time. While I prefer the term "aging," I have come to appreciate the fact that I can remember times and experiences that are vanishing quickly or already lost in our throwaway digital age.

I dreamed one night that I was hanging out with Robert Downey Jr and Leonardo DiCaprio. I raved about Downey's Oscar-winning work in Oppenheimer as Werner Heisenberg, and to get over the awkward moment with DiCaprio (not nominated), I said one reason I enjoyed Oppenheimer is that I lived through that era and understood the context.

I asked if they knew who Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were. Leonardo, who'll turn 50 this year, had never heard of them. And I was off and running with the whole story as known to the child of a Jewish family growing up in Queens in the 1950s, in a family very much like the Rosenbergs except not so far to the left, though I had aunts and uncles who were. That, as much as the rush to judgment, was what made the Rosenberg execution so shocking.

"I knew kids who knew their kids," I told the movie stars. True. 

The dream ended with bureaucratic types coming in with paper files and old-fashioned fingerprinting apparatus. This suggests that like the Rosenbergs' story, my mother's dictum, "Never sign a petition—it could ruin your life!" is still kicking around in my unconscious. Like most young people, I ignored my mother's advice. The state of the world today demonstrates how much good signing petitions did, so my mother was right about that. But my life was never ruined, and I hope it's too late now.

I'm two years older than the oldest Baby Boomer. My family lived without a car till I was nine, without a TV till I was ten. I first rode in a plane when I was sixteen. As an adult, I didn't have a computer in my home till 1984 (a Commodore 64), when my son was in high school, and I didn't learn to use one (a Mac Classic II) till I was forty-seven. I still have dreams about using an old rotary phone and having to dial over and over because for some reason my finger can't make it all the way around. I remember when you couldn't get pecan pie, maple sugar candy, or croissants in New York. If you wanted them, you had to go to Florida, Vermont, or Paris.

I remember when a college-educated girl (not woman) had to start in any field, including publishing, as a secretary and had to wear a skirt to work. The skirt had to be rehemmed, up or down, every year as fashion dictated. No such thing as wearing whatever length suited you until about 1970. I remember pantyhose, and before pantyhose, stockings and a garter belt. I even remember the dreaded girdle back in the mists of time.

Like the Boomers, I remember where I was when John F. Kennedy was shot: at college, in my off-campus apartment waiting for a friend who was due for a visit. She arrived two hours late. When I opened the door, she said, tears streaming down her face, "Oh, Liz, the President is dead."

Until that moment, I'd never been touched by assassination. No terrorism. No school shootings. Beheadings happened back in the sixteenth century, in Tudor times. Tsunamis happened on a distant side of the world, when there was a distant side of the world. Earthquakes happened only in Japan and San Francisco. Tornados happened only in Kansas, and they led to the Land of Oz.

On the one hand, we're not in the Land of Oz any more. On the other, I remember the Suez Crisis in 1956. On a rainy afternoon when I was twelve, I heard that the British and French had bombed Cairo. Once World War II (which we still called "the War") was over, the British weren't supposed to go to war. I was afraid that World War III was about to start. I remember thinking, "I'll never get to go to college." Wrong.

If you keep going even when nothing turns out the way you expect, I've found that every wall you hit turns out to be another bend in the road. And if you live long enough, you get to be history.

On Whiteyball

Whitey Herzog, former Major League Baseball player and manager, passed away in April, at the age of 92.  

What does that have to do with writing?  Stay tuned.  I’ll get there, with a little meandering along the way.

I was twelve years old when Herzog managed the St. Louis Cardinals to victory in the 1982 World Series.  You’re never again a fan of anything the way you’re a fan when you’re twelve, and the Cardinals were my team.  Downstate Illinois, where I grew up, was in a perpetual state of simmering conflict between fans of the Cardinals and fans of their fiercest rivals, the Chicago Cubs (plus a few people who rooted for the White Sox, apparently just to be weird).  Now, my father was, and remains, a die-hard Cub booster.  When I was very young, however, I had a crush on a babysitter who liked the Cardinals, which was enough to cause my loyalty to permanently shift to the redbirds.

Whitey Herzog

(Six years old, and already a femme fatale was alluring me into betraying my own family. Shocking. I was destined to write crime stories!)  

Baseball in the early eighties was a very different game than the one played today, and not just because the abomination known as the designated hitter was still safely quarantined in the American League.  Power wasn’t nearly as central or dominant; the Cardinals, as a team, hit only 67 home runs in their championship year (by way of contrast, in 2023 the Atlanta Braves hit 307, and even the team with the fewest homers, the Cleveland Guardians, hit 124).  Instead of waiting for a shot over the wall, St. Louis followed a strategy widely called Whiteyball, built around sound defense, solid pitching, and, above all, speed.  It wasn’t at all unusual for the Cards to string together a walk, a stolen base, a sacrifice fly, and a squeeze bunt, putting themselves on the scoreboard without ever getting a base hit.  Cardinal broadcaster Mike Shannon described playing the Cards this way: “You think you’re just getting a few mosquito bites, and all of a sudden your head falls off.”

I loved this aggressive style of play.  I still do, though you don’t often see it these days.  Even before Herzog arrived in St. Louis, my favorite player was Lou Brock.  Brock was a member of the elite 3,000 hit club,

My Lou Brock shrine

but more importantly to me, he was perhaps the greatest stolen base artist who ever lived (I know what the stats say, and I hear some of you yelling the name Rickey Henderson, to which I reply, with a dismissive curl of my lip, that I am familiar with his work).  Brock was retired by 1982, but his aura still hung over the team.

In Bull Durham, veteran catcher Crash Davis tells young pitcher Nuke LaLoosh to stop trying to strike everybody out: “Strikeouts are boring.  Besides that, they’re fascist.”  I have similar feelings about the home run.  It can be spectacular, but it’s an individual feat, a single player imposing his will on the game rather than a team working together.  Once the ball leaves the bat, there’s nothing to watch except the hero jogging around the bases.  Give me, instead, a battle of wits between a pitcher and a speed demon on first who keeps edging a couple inches closer to second.  Give me a well-executed hit and run, the ball squeaking under the glove of a second baseman pulled out of position.  Give me a beautifully placed bunt trickling along just inside the foul line, the runner charging from third, the bang-bang play at the plate (and no review via replay, thank you very much). And, what the hell, give me the best defensive shortstop who ever lived doing a backflip as he runs to his position, just for the sheer joy of it.

Ozzie Smith on his way to work

At its heart, Whiteyball is built on a simple idea: make something happen.  If you stand at the plate just waiting to hit a home run, you’re going to fail more often than you succeed.  Often you’ll strike out and turn around to trudge back to the bench.  But if you get a couple of guys on base and just manage to put the ball in play, all kinds of things start to occur.  Aggressive baserunning has caused more than a few defenses to utterly fall apart, after all.  In Whiteyball, every runner and every ball put into play has the potential to bring in a run.  Every pitch becomes a test of strategy and improvisation.  For me, at least, it’s a style that’s a heck of a lot more fun to watch–and it looks like a heck of a lot more fun to play, too.

Which brings me, finally, back to writing.  When I read about Herzog’s passing, and thought fondly back to the way his team played, it occurred to me that make something happen is a pretty accurate description of the way I approach writing, on a couple of levels.

First, on a macro level, I feel like my focus on writing short stories has a certain affinity with the principles of Whiteyball.  A novel, in this possibly tortured analogy, would be a three-run homer.  Instead of building my fiction-writing campaign around that, I’m going for the equivalent of bloop singles, stolen bases and drag bunts: short stories in magazines and anthologies, as many as I have the time and imagination to produce.  For me, at least, it’s more fun, just as Whiteyball was more fun than, say, watching Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa turn games into steroid-fueled home run derbies.  Every story I send out is putting a ball in play–and you never know what might result.

As a career strategy, it seems to be working out.  I’m enjoying the hell out of writing, seeing my name in a fair number of publications and, hey, getting invited to be a SleuthSayer is kind of like being called up to The Show, right?

Words of Wisdom from Bull Durham

Make something happen is also a pretty good strategy on the micro level–that is, within the world of each story.  When you’ve got five thousand words (and sometimes a lot less) to work with, there’s only so much space you can spend on passages of introspection and detailed description.  Those things have their place, of course, but, most of the time, it’s action and incident that drive the story forward and keep the reader engaged.  When I’m working on a story and I just get stuck, I can often get unstuck by making something happen–a new character arrives, a gun goes off, a police car comes around the corner at just the wrong moment.

I’m not suggesting that Whitey Herzog actually directly influenced the way I write. After all, I didn’t publish my first short story until thirty years after his 1982 triumph.  But I do find an affinity between his style of baseball and my style of writing, and I think the central idea is one that can be helpful to any writer–and indeed, in a lot of areas of life.

When in doubt, make something happen.

RIP, Whitey, and thanks for some of the greatest moments of my childhood.

(And now a word from our sponsor: if you're interested in my most recent effort to make something happen, check out today's release of Black Cat Weekly #143, which includes my story "Sunrise at the Moonshine Palace." Thanks to BCW editor and fellow SleuthSayer Barb Goffman for selecting this tale of music and murder!)

Three Things You Should Never Ask an Author

Moving beyond the ubiquitous and somewhat innocent, "Where do you get your ideas"- (you really don't want to peek into the dismal tangle that is my brain...)

Allow me to present three loaded questions you should definitely NOT ask an author!

1.  How much money do you make?"

I understand that people are curious about how much you can make writing a book.  I also understand that some are wondering if they can give up their day job for the dream of becoming an author.  But truly, it is rude to ask such a question of a complete stranger.  Would you ask your lawyer?  Your accountant?  Hairdresser?  

Still, I get asked this regularly.  Usually, I describe the standard royalty arrangement:  "Most authors earn around 10% of cover price."  With a $20 book, that's 2 bucks per sale.  A bestseller in Canada is usually considered to be 5000 copies (about 7000 in the States, I hear.)  That means, if my book is a bestseller, it would earn $10,000 at least.  Keep in mind that 96% of books published these days do not sell 1000 copies.

That usually shuts them up.

2.  "Do you use a pen name?"

Usually, this comes with the line, "I've never heard of you before.  Do you use a pen name?"

The first time I heard this, I laughed out loud, and responded, "You mean like James Patterson?"

Talk about an unintentional insult. You couldn't be that famous because they haven't heard about you.  Or is it intentional?  I'll always give the benefit of the doubt.  And in fact, I have used a pen name.  But only for my erotica.

Luckily, most people who come to see me at events these days already know about me. 

3.  "I'll give you my unpublished manuscript to read for free, if you'll recommend me to your publisher."

It's true.  I get this at book signing events every year from complete strangers who obviously know nothing about how this biz works.  

I must have been a naive little writer, when I first started having success.  For instance, it came as a shock to me, that people would befriend me on Facebook and in person, pretend to enjoy my company, and then ask me to recommend their manuscript to my agent or publisher.

In fact, they would beg me, and then get angry when I tell them my publisher and agent do not welcome this.  Talk about feeling used.

Here's the scoop with that:

First, it takes time to read any manuscript.  The stranger is asking me to give up my precious leisure time, for free.  To read a book I wouldn't have chosen.

Next, and more important:  The stranger is asking me to put my reputation on the line - which is in fact, my bread and butter in this writing biz- for a complete stranger.  They are asking me to badger my already overworked agent and/or publisher to look at a work that may or may not have any relevance for what they publish. Why would I do that?  

Who in their right mind would risk their hard-earned relationship with their agent and publisher, for a stranger or mere acquaintance?

In every case where I have relented and done this - that is, taken a chance on someone I know who has a manuscript with some merit - my agent and publisher have not taken them on.  And the aspiring writer has been disappointed in me.

The sad fact is, agents and publishers don't appreciate authors in their stable creating more work for them, by making them feel obligated to read a manuscript they didn't ask for.

So What Should You Ask an Author?

That's easy!  "When is your next book coming out?"

About Melodie...(from a recent article.)  See the whole article on her website, 

http://www.melodiecampbell.com  

Good Sentences

If the sentence is "the fundamental unit of a work of literature," then a good sentence should be the goal of a good writer. But what is a good sentence?

Found another excellent lesson for writers online, entitled HOW TO WRITE A GREAT SENTENCE. What I like most about the article is what we know – there is no definite way to write a great sentence.

Beginning with an explanation of "style" by the use of "creative devices, grammar, diction, tone, rhythm and cadence," the article says all of those elements "taken as a whole" is "style."

For examples to compare styles, the article chose William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.

Faulkner wrote purple prose with long, convoluted sentences. Whereas Hemingway wrote short, clipped, concise, pithy sentences capturing, like F. Scott Fitzgerald, "the flicker of modern life.”

The tempo of the writer's sentences reflect the speed of the lives they depicted. "Faulkner basks in the heat of south" while "Hemingway flits at life in the city." While Faulkner lounged, Hemingway rushed.

Faulkner said of Hemingway, "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."

Hemingway said of Faulkner, "Poor Faulkner, does he really think big emotions come from big words?"

Faulkner House, 624 Pirate Alley, New Orleans
where Nobel laureate William Faulkner
wrote his first novel Soldiers’ Pay, 1925

The article illustrates examples of each writer's work, chosen as they serve "the acute ends of he spectrum of sentence structure."

Long sentences? Short sentence. Medium length sentences. Vary them to turn your writing into music, let your writing sing, give it a pleasant lilt, a harmony.

OK, I knew a lot of this but the article is a good reminder. I recommend it, expecially to beginning writers.

 

 

 

 

© The Written Word

 

That's all for now,

www.ONeilDeNoux.com

Once More Into the Details, Dear Friends!

Last time around I laid the groundwork for some discussion how to get historical mystery writing “right,” including avoiding such pitfalls as anachronistic writing guaranteed to pull the reader out of the story. This time I have adapted a post I wrote eleven years ago as my follow-up, in large part because everything I said then still holds true today. That adaptation is below.

-Brian

*     *.    *.    *.    *

A while back I wrote an extensive post on what I deemed "Cosplay in Fiction." In that post I 
promised to elaborate further on what constitutes "cosplay" in historical fiction in my next post.

Not this type of cosplay.

I didn't.

And I'm still mulling how best to elaborate and wrap up that subject in a blog posting to appear in this space in the not-too-distant future.

In the mean-time I intend to explore a tangential line of thought, centering on examples of what works and what doesn't in the historical mystery author's quest to bring believable, engaging historical fiction to the modern reader. And I'm going to spread it out over a number of my upcoming blog posts.

You see, this year I had The great privilege of co-planning and coordinating the Seattle left Coast crime conference. As it’s always the case with one of these professional conferences, I came away energized, I came away provoked, I came away intrigued. I came away ready to think about the parameters of what I do. Of how I can do it better. Of what I’m already doing well. And of how I can help others to do the same.

Is it any surprise, that I've got a few thoughts?

Not THIS type, either

Not least of which is what works and what doesn't when attempting to evoke a certain time period. This is probably one of the most difficult aspects of the historical mystery juggling act: paint a picture of life in another era, likely with characters who speak a language other than English, and still make them seem natural and unaffected, all without diving so deep into period language that the modern reader does not get either lost or completely put off.

No mean feat.

And THIS? Just flat out disturbing....

I have some examples of what I think works, and what I think doesn't. And as always, I'm prepared to share.

As I said, I've been giving this sort of thing a lot of thought lately. Partly, as I said above, because of Bouchercon and partly because of my own on-going final pass through a long-percolating historical mystery novel of my own.

Let me state at this point that I have nothing but admiration for anyone who attempts this ludicrous balancing act– whether they fail or succeed. I for one have always found it a formidable challenge, and feel I've failed more times than I've succeeded. (Which is a large part of the reason that the final draft of my current book project is my third complete draft!).

And with that said, let's move on to what works, and what doesn't. This week's entry:

Slang!

I was reading a mystery novel a while back and a fairly innocuous turn of phrase knocked me completely out of the story- you know, that experience that is usually the last thing any author wants to foist upon their audience.

The phrase in question was "Don't get your knickers in a twist."

Now, the author of the book in question is British and, although I'm an American, I'm fairly 

Not THIS type of anachronism

Anglophilic, and am comfortable with British slang expressions, so ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem for me.

The problem was two-fold: the setting, and the character speaking. It wasn't set in modern England, Scotland, Wales or Ireland. And the speaker wasn't a citizen of any of those countries.

The character in question was a citizen of ancient Rome, speaking to another citizen of that city, in that city, circa 80 A.D.

Hello, Anachronism!

Now, I get what the writer in question was trying to do. Trying to portray ancient Romans talking casually with each other, in an intimate, familiar manner. No mean feat, seeing as they spoke Latin and not English.

At the very least wouldn't they have said something like, "Don't get your sublegaria* in a twist"?

I mean, the only way this character could have sounded more out of time would be if he had suggested to his comrade that he "slow your roll"!

The problem for me as a reader at this point was that, while I was and am willing to concede that Romans, like every other variety of human being since the dawn of time, had their own pet slang phrases and humorous sayings, I had a hard time believing that they used this particular one.

Further compounding the problem was the fact that the speech in this novel was so anachronistic that it pulled me right out of the story. And this was just the tip of the iceberg. Throughout the story I kept picturing these ancient Roman characters speaking with cockney accents. At any moment I expected them to break in rhyming slang!

This brought to mind an author who actually gets this sort of thing right. I have raved before about the writing of Philip Kerr, a British author of the Bernie Gunther series of novels, set in Nazi and post-war Germany during the 1930s and 1940s.

For my money Kerr gets Gunther just right: in some ways a morally compromised figure (as many 

Germans who survived the first world war and the subsequent years-long party which was Weimar Germany of the 1920s were);former homicide detective and sometimes private investigator who has repeated dealings with the Nazis while never becoming one of them or buying in to what they were selling.

Gunther is truly a man of his time, believing, as many in Germany quietly did, that the Nazis were by turns keystone cops and murderous thugs. And even during his dealings with them he manages to chart a course that leaves him (for the most part) morally clean.

What helps Kerr really sell Gunther and the rest of his cast of period characters as believable avatars of the period in question is his ability to take German slang from that time and translate it into English, without it losing its period flavor.

For example, a pistol is a "lighter." A cigarette is a "nail" (for your coffin, obviously).  When asked during a 2009 interview whether these slang words were genuine or of his own invention, Kerr said:

"The slang is not my own invention nor is it anything to do with the police. The words are often more literal translations of real German phrases instead of their English equivalents. It's as simple as that."

With all due respect, the man is being far too modest. It's not as simple as that. While it's true that Nazi Germany is a period of history which has passed down to us a wealth of first person narratives (much of them truly horrifying), the skill herein lies in the choice of these words, knowing which concepts fit into the dialogue without extensive explanation, seamlessly, if you will.

Imagine trying to do that with such freighted concepts as gleichschaltung (the notion of every aspect of a society fitting together and working like cogs in a machine, keeping that society moving and well-run) or the ever-popular schadenfreude (joy experienced as a result of witnessing the suffering of others).

Sometimes it's what you don't try to say that sells your story. The key is in knowing what works, and what doesn't.

Making your Roman citizen sound like a cockney cab driver? Not so much. Having your German detective light up a nail, or take a lighter away from a drunken member of the Hitler Youth? Perfect.

See you in two weeks!

Voyage to the Bottom of the Barrel: Hillbillys in a Haunted House

VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL: HILLBILLYS IN A HAUNTED HOUSE by Michael Mallory

If you ever find yourself striving to solve the mystery of what is the worst motion picture ever made, follow the trail no further than Hillbillys [sic] in a Haunted House. The film has everything a 1940s Poverty Row horror comedy should have: aging horror movie actors and no-talent leads; a story in which the creepy “haunted” house turns out to be a lair for foreign spies; substandard special effects, and college theatre production values. There’s even a gorilla in a cage in the basement. The problem is that it wasn’t made in the 1940s. Hillbillys in a Haunted House─ which is remembered today (if at all) for the casting of Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr., and John Carradine as the spies──was shot in late 1966 and released the following year.

Even if it had been made in the 1940s (with the same cast!) it would be a wretched film, but asking audiences to accept this antiquated mess it a year before Rosemary’s Baby and Night of the Living Dead is simply insulting.

Produced specifically for the Southern theatrical circuit, the film was the follow up to producer Bernard Woolner’s 1966’s gem Las Vegas Hillbillys, which starred country singer Ferlin Husky, perennial starlet Mamie Van Doren, and novelty songwriter Don Bowman. Husky and Bowman returned for Hillbillys, but Van Doren was replaced by Joi Lansing, a road company Jayne Mansfield who never quite made it to stardom (for the record, the real Mansfield also appeared in Las Vegas Hillbillys).

While Husky was no actor, there is some entertainment value in his imitation of a werewolf transformation any time he goes for a high note. The dyspeptic Bowman is ostensibly the film’s comedy relief, and to be fair, he is funnier than Jack Lord. But only barely. As for Lansing, she can sing (if not act) and no one filled out a chambray shirt better.

Hillbillys in a Haunted House begins with these three Dixiefied “Bowery Boys” surrogates motoring their way to a Country Music Jamboree in Nashville, but before long they find themselves in the middle of a gun battle between two spies and the police─ literally in the middle. Their luxury convertible is the only thing separating the guns-a-blazin’ shooters. When the bullets stop flying, they move on and decide to shelter for the night in an old plantation house where “terrifying” things begin to happen, all orchestrated by the spies who work for a wannabe Dragon Lady named “Madame Wong” (played with Acquanetta-level incompetence by Linda Ho). The goal is to infiltrate a nearby missile factory (something every small town should have).

Having last worked together in the threadbare 1956 shocker The Black Sleep

, Rathbone, Chaney, and Carradine were by this point on the downslide, Carradine slightly less so than the others given his propensity for jumping from quality films to utter dreck and back again, stopping only long enough to cash the paychecks. Here he seems to be amusing himself by overplaying and mugging. Chaney’s stardom was over by the late 1940s, but he established a reputation as a reliable character actor throughout the ‘50s. By the ‘60s, though, he was in an alcohol-fueled descent. Still, he managed to contribute the movie’s sole dramatically effective moment by stepping out of the general silliness and into cold-blooded killer mode for a rather chilling murder scene.

The saddest part of watching Hillbillys in a Haunted House is seeing the great Basil Rathbone struggling through his last film (he died only two months after its release). Once the cinema’s top villain, then its preeminent Sherlock Holmes, Rathbone in later years found himself adrift in a changing youth-and-realism-oriented Hollywood. Always in need of money to support his wife’s legendary, extravagant party-giving, he was forced to accept roles in drive-in pictures, do spoken word records, and shill Leisy Beer on television just to keep going. Unable to muster up much energy or enthusiasm, Rathbone underplays his role and his trademark crisp speech is somewhat slurred with age and illness. But at least he appeared to have read the script, unlike Carradine, who at one point calls Rathbone’s character “George” when it’s supposed to be “Gregor.”

Once the spies are rounded up by a stalwart G-Man played by Richard “Captain Midnight” Webb, our three heroes get back on the road to Nashville, crooning the same lame song they started with (in fact, it’s the same footage). But before the viewer can thank the deity of their choice for the film being over, the action shifts to the Music Jamboree and goes on for another fifteen minutes. A parade of country “stars” take the stage, ranging from well-known Merle Haggard to somebody named Marcella Wright (maybe they knew who she was in the South). After numbers by Bowman, Husky, and Lansing, the film finally comes to an end. At least it stops.

Someone named Duke Yelton wrote Hillbillys in a Haunted House, making it a compendium of every hokey, cornball Halloween gag in the book, from the ubiquitous ape in the basement to flying a sheet around a string to simulate a ghost. Yelton never scripted another film (for which we should all be grateful). Jean Yarbrough, the picture’s director, on the other hand, was a prolific Hollywood hack whose most notorious movie is 1940’s The Devil Bat, featuring Bela Lugosi and a giant rubber bat wobbling around on wires. Yarbrough is best remembered for his work with Abbott and Costello, particularly in their television series, but here his clumsy staging and inability to elicit any convincing performances falls short of even the TV standards of the time short of even the TV standards of the time.

If nothing else, suffering through 86 minutes of Hillbillys in a Haunted House makes one realize that, despite his best efforts, the legendary Ed Wood, Jr. did not make the worst film ever. Reportedly, a 1969 epic called The Mummy and the Curse of the Jackals, also with Carradine, is every bit as atrocious as Hillbillys in a Haunted House. But I have no interest in finding that out for myself.

Answering the Call

How do you approach the challenge when writing to a call?

Is a theme a fence or a gate? Does it constrain writing, limiting where the author's imagination might go? Or does it open opportunities, spurring the writer to take prose in a direction they might not have considered going without the prompt? 

My answer probably depends on whether I like the prompt. 

Private Dicks and Disco Balls, an anthology of 1970s private eye stories edited by fellow SleuthSayer, Michael Bracken, was released earlier this month. I'm honored that Michael included a story of mine, "The Kratz Gambit," within the pages. 

I like writing stories set in the past. Typically, however, my historicals occur earlier. The opportunity to put a story in a decade I lived through poked me to try something a little different. 

The 1970s are the first decade I remember. I was around for much of the swinging '60s, but for me, that meant playground swings and tires suspended from ropes tied to tree limbs. I wasn't old enough to have a feel for much of the vibe of that decade. 

But for a '70s anthology, I got totally stoked. I dusted off my good threads, the powder blue leisure suit, tied on my puka shells, slapped in an 8-track tape and fired up my Smith Corona. Seriously, I didn't do any of those things. The suit doesn't fit anymore and might be life-threatening if worn around an open flame. I no longer own the necklace, the typewriter, or the sound machine. I did, however, reminisce about the decade so that I might draw from my experiences. 

The terms of the call were straightforward. Michael sought a story featuring a working private eye and incorporating a significant event from the decade. 

As with any themed anthology, the touchstone must be the call. Which happening from the decade caught my attention? My mind ticked off possibilities. The Vietnam War, Watergate, and Elvis's death presented possibilities.  

I skipped the center-of-the-plate events. Although I needed to incorporate something significant, the decade's episode I chose must make my story unique. I wanted to stand out in the crowd. I think it's a good rule for answering a call. Where might a writer go that, while remaining true to the ask, presents a different take? Avoid the obvious choices and pass on the low-hanging fruit. The editor, finicky guy that he is, would likely only accept one Watergate story. I sought something at the margins. 

I settled on the chess match between Bobby Fischer of the United States and the Soviet grandmaster, Boris Spassky. The 1972 chess match became nightly news. The games captured national attention. Television stations across America had chess nerds demonstrating the moves on oversized boards. (Spoiler alert: the American beat the Ruskie.)

The Fischer/Spassky matches not only presented an event I thought few writers would tackle, but the games were also personally significant. My friends and I followed this micro battle between the world's two superpowers. We learned to play chess. In my case, I learned to play badly, but at least I knew how the pieces moved so that we could follow what the man on television described. 

The chess metaphor--move and countermove with one player trying to outwit another--worked great for a mystery story. But as I prepared to write my story, the events behind the tale conjured up a memory. Although my friends and I aren't reflected in "The Kratz Gambit, " I had a personal connection. Thus, my second suggestion for writing to a themed anthology. Find that personal piece. What's that thing you bring that no one else can or might? 

When plotting, I often engage in random internet searches. Into a search engine, I type words tangentially related to my story. I look to see what connections the internet might make. Random searches might open a possible direction for the tale. An article might shut down something I previously believed to be accurate. Some possibilities open while others close--gates and fences. Marry your experience to the research. 

My third thought about writing for a themed anthology should be obvious. Give the editor what they are seeking. I hit the required word count and followed all the submission rules. Although I read the titular "Disco Balls" as a cultural reference rather than a specific request for a music-themed story, I sprinkled in song titles from the period. I wanted to recognize my editor's interest in music. The songs also helped tie the story to 1972.

The advice may sound basic: pay attention to the theme and give the editor a story that fits the call and word count. But look at the theme's margins and incorporate personal experience supported by a bit of research. A writer can craft a story that will hopefully surprise the editor and secure a place in the anthology. The plan worked with "The Kratz Gambit." I'm glad Michael liked it. I hope the readers do, too. 

Until next time.